


Same Old Song

by treefrogie84



Series: Dust in the Wind [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode Tag, F/M, Gen, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, Language, M/M, Nerd Dean, Nerd Sam, Recreational Drug Use, subtle references to other shows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-13
Updated: 2016-07-13
Packaged: 2018-07-23 19:46:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 6,550
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7477488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/treefrogie84/pseuds/treefrogie84
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The thoughts between hunts, the things we don't see on screen. Episode codas and fill-in for every episode of season 1.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Pilot

**Author's Note:**

> I've been working on this since November 2015. I just wanted to get into the habit of writing every day and writing a coda for every episode seemed like a good idea at the time.
> 
> Thanks to DorkilySoulless for sitting next to me for 8 months and telling me that this wasn't a stupid idea, even when every single word felt like it was pulling teeth. SolsticeKitten patiently made sure my verb tenses matched.

Katrina really fucked with every cemetery in New Orleans. Dean has dug 8 graves in 6 nights, trying to catch an angry witch while evading the National Guard and the remaining looters. Fuck if he thought Katrina could get worse from what TV had been showing… until he dropped into the French Quarter trying to figure out why 4 cops had been attacked by ghosts in their own homes. Solo hunts suck normally, but this is the first time in over a year he wishes that he had a partner.

By the time Dean comes up for air, he’s not heard from Dad in over two weeks. And while that isn’t terribly unusual anymore (hasn’t been unusual for over four years now…), it’s still cause for some worry. But Dean’s exhausted, covered in cemetery mud, and just wants a shower, a beer, and some sleep. Preferably in that order, but he is willing to be flexible.

Dad’s lack of contact doesn’t look better in the morning after some sleep. No phone calls on his phone or the burner cells. After coffee, Dean calls Pastor Jim… and things get worse. Only reason Jim knows John’s still alive is due to Dean’s check-ins; he’s not spoken to John directly in months. There’s no one else that Dean thinks would have heard from Dad, or would even answer Dad’s calls.

Fuck.

Something really is wrong. Dean quickly grabs his gear and tosses it in Baby. Dad had been headed towards California last, nearly three days drive away. Why the hell hadn’t he noticed something was off earlier? Now he’ll be playing catch up until he finds Dad. He snatches a packet of Pop-tarts from the backseat food stash and sets Baby northwest. He’ll find Dad sooner or later.

And if he happens to stop off in Palo Alto on his way… well… as long as he isn’t seen, what Sam doesn’t know won’t hurt him.


	2. Wendigo

For the second time in his life, Sam huddled against his big brother while his home burned in front of him. Watched his new start crisp and burn and float to start some other fire to ruin some other person’s life.

Dean stood in front of him, pushing the cheap fire department blanket off his shoulders- when had Dean moved from his side?- and wrapped a heavy blanket from the Impala’s trunk around him. It was too heavy, more suited to January nights in the car or to pad fragile items in the trunk than a mild October night. But it smelled of aftershave and gun oil and Colorado, not chocolate chip cookies and hand lotion and hospitals. It was enough.

Sam watched a cop head in their direction, the way the tension in Dean’s body ratcheted up enough of a warning. Thank Christ for Dean, pushing himself off the car to head off the cop while Sam remained dry eyed and hunched further into the blanket. He couldn’t hear the pair over the fire truck engines, but he knew the story Dean would be spinning anyway- weekend trip with his brother, just barely home when fire started. Close enough to the truth to back up anything the arson investigators might find, no indication of anything supernatural. It would do. He’d have to make sure Jess…

Oh. He’d never have to remind Jess of anything ever again. Oh. Shit. 

His knees started to buckle, sliding down the steel quarter panel. Jess. He hadn’t cried in the aftermath of an attack since he was eleven. Jess. He should have stayed home. Told her the truth. Never moved in with her. Never let Luis set them up on a date. Never left hunting and family behind.

Dean, dismissed by the cop, started back to the car. Started rearranging the backseat, trying to give Sam time and space to grieve. A duffel dropped to his side, the cooler rattling as it was moved from the front wheel well to the backseat. Dean being the best brother he could be, making room in his home for the little brother who abandoned him. 5 more minutes and he’d help. 5 more minutes.


	3. Dead in the Water

Dean’s voice still freezes in his throat sometimes. He has months of being fine, of being a snarky asshole. And then there’s a hunt and he just… chokes… in the aftermath. It was worse when Sam was gone, when every case involving fire or kids would make him silent for hours or days afterwards. It is just as well that hunting is mostly a solitary occupation. No one would have been able to work with him after that case in New York a couple years back. It’d been days before he’d been able to manage more than a grunt.

He knows he’s probably going to go silent after this one, can feel the rough edges of a kid who just wanted friends rub, over-sensitive and loud, against the dark corner where his childhood hides. But he also knows that doing anything but allowing himself to be silent will just prolong it. The silence chafes now, with Sam nearby, feels selfish, like by not talking he’s allowing the monsters to get Sammy. But Sammy is beside him, sitting in silence, munching on one of the sandwiches Lucas made them. Over the years, the silence has captured him too.

Maybe now, without Dad in the mix, they can pull each other from the mire.


	4. Phantom Traveler

Fuck, Sam was tired. He rolled over to stare at the clock some more. 4:19 AM, and no more than 30 minutes of sleep all night. Sighing, he gave sleep up as a pipe dream. Which, at this point, he wasn’t totally adverse to, once they found themselves in a college town he could navigate. Fuck he was tired. He’d do just about anything to get some fucking sleep; real sleep that wasn’t plagued by nightmares (sometimes, he really wished he could be like Dean- couple shots of whiskey to clear his conscience after a bad hunt and then out like a light). He’d not had to resort to pot in order to sleep in years, not since his third semester, but now… God, now he was willing to try anything. 

Might as well start moving. If he left now, he could get a walk in and maybe pick up breakfast before Dean woke up.

He forgot to be quiet letting himself back into the room. But they didn’t spend last night hunting or hustling, so it would be forgiven. Eventually. He’d brought coffee as an apology anyway. It was time to get moving anyway. They were running low on cash and needed ammo.

Of course, forgetting to be quiet also meant he was greeted with a knife as soon as the door closed, but that was typical. God, he was homesick, missing Jess and wanting to wrap himself around her while he slept. Instead, he had a cheap motel and a car. At least Dean was around; he’d hate to do this by himself.


	5. Bloody Mary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean's secret

Dean’s first solo hunt wasn’t the beautiful thing he told Sammy. Yeah, he burned some bones, and the house hadn’t had any further problems, but it didn’t really feel like a win, still doesn’t. It had just spiraled out of control so fast. 

 

To this day, he isn’t sure how he could have prevented it. Sammy was barely 14 and needed help with a chemistry project, and well, Sam always came first. Dad hadn’t been around in weeks and while Dean had no problems leaving Sam for a short weekend trip, he refused to be gone for longer than that when Dad was out of contact. He would  _ never  _ leave Sammy alone, thinking he wasn’t coming back. And the haunting wasn’t too bad when he first caught wind of it: house next town over was reporting banging on the doors and windows, pictures moving of their own volition. Nothing that couldn’t wait a couple days, until the weekend. Simple enough that he contemplated getting Sam to help (until he looked at the stack of homework that Sam had to do, homework he couldn’t help with, and decided that he could do this one by himself.)

  
It wasn’t even a hard hunt. It just… escalated too quickly. Wednesday, it was knocking and typical kid stuff. Friday, one of the radio station hosts, Cynthia  Cabrera , stepped into the house and disappeared. And to make it worse, he couldn’t even figure out why. No violent deaths, no signs of witchcraft, no signs of cursed objects. Just… a missing radio host and endless photos of lighthouses. The house was barely 20 years old, the first owner had just died two years before. Dean salted and burned everything he could think of, just in case, and the haunting stopped. The ghost (if that’s even what it was) stopped jacking around in the house. But it didn’t sit right, to the point where even nearly 10 years later, he still doesn’t think he got that ghost, regardless of what he told Sam and Dad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First round of "spot the reference"! Internet cookies to whoever correctly identifies the reference in the comments.


	6. Skin

Monday, February 27, 2006

To: Warren, Rebecca; Warren, Zachary; Brady, Tyson; Griffin, Luis

From: Winchester, Sam

Subject: Update on the Roadtrip

* * *

 

Hi All,

Sorry about the lack of emails. The place we’ve been staying has awful internet and Dean and I have been pretty busy. I’m doing ok, miss you all, miss school even, but I really needed this time.

 

I spoke to student services and the dean. As long as I come back next semester (so… this fall), they’ll allow a seamless reintegration, won’t have to retake any classes or my LSAT. I’m going to try. The bad days are a lot further between now

 

Road Trip update:

I’m/ We’re still working our way around the country. Spent about a month in the Northeast, staying with some family friends and helping out in their antique store. Found a really weird/ ugly old mirror that took forever to clean. We weren’t terribly far from that plane that went down in early December. That was wild. Dean has always been a nervous flyer, but I don’t think I’m ever going to get him back on a plane after that.

 

We’re heading back west now… Spent last night in Columbus, OH. I’m trying to convince Dean to head south- maybe I could meet up with you for spring break? Let me know if I should keep trying. If no one will be out that way, we’ll probably head back towards Lawrence or Houston.

 

Love you all, see you in a few weeks.

Sam

~~~~~~

Sam Winchester

866-907-3235


	7. Hookman

The drive out of St. Louis is miserable. Light-hearted teasing or not, Dean Winchester being a wanted felon just makes life harder. Fake IDs only go so far, all it takes is some busy body to see Dean’s face and call the cops. And while Dean doesn’t spend a lot of effort trying to find honest work anymore, it’s nice to have a single identity that is  _ his _ .

 

The first rule Bobby ever taught him, ‘Never use your own ID.’  And now he’s gone and well and truly fucked that up.

 

He isn’t a grifter. He’s spent enough time with a few (even had a case overlap with one a few years back) to know that he can manage the short con, but anything longer falls apart. Tara said that he didn’t lose himself in the character, too focused on the job. Tara never has both her own and innocent civilian’s lives riding on a con. Dean just can’t do that, always has his name and history at the front of his mind. He has to switch too often, from FBI to forest service to journalist to family friend, to dig deep in the way he should if he wants to pull a con. And he still loses track of himself. Not as often when he’s hunting with someone else, but days of no one calling him by his name really fucks with him. He needs that one stable identity to keep his mind. As far as he knows, every hunter who does this for very long is the same way. Occasionally, someone makes a clean break of it- one identity before hunting, one after- but it’s not common and they normally have trouble of a different sort following them.

 

And he just became one of them. Fuck. 

 

But this is why they’re headed towards Blue Earth and Pastor Jim. He will know… someone… who can turn him into a different Dean Winchester. Maybe this one graduated high school. Probably not.

  
At least being dead means that while they need to get the hell out of St. Louis, they don’t need to hightail it to the other end of the country. Just getting out of Missouri will be enough, probably. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another round of "Spot the Reference"!


	8. Bugs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was written /months/ before The Chitters aired and we found out that Sam didn't smoke during college. Fixing it would have been a much bigger deal than ignoring it. So... I did.

After four months, Sam expected more from himself. He’d grown up in this life, had seen just about every form of monster kill that happened in the United States, had his first kill when he was twelve. Why the fuck was he still having nightmares about Jess’s death? Nightmares so vivid that he was lucky to get three to four hours of sleep in a night?

At this point, the things he could count on to knock him out were down to pot (which wrecked havoc on his reflexes) and easy listening in the car. Which wasn’t exactly fair to Dean, even if he hadn’t said anything against it.

So if the cost of getting a night in a house was putting up token protests for Dean to ignore? Done. Sleep on a bed that wasn’t moving and hadn’t been slept in by hundreds of others.

Brady and Luis were always so jealous of his ability to pull all-nighters with no more than a few cups of coffee. Would they have if they’d known how hard won the ability to stay up for twenty-four, thirty-six, forty-eight hours straight was? Did they ever notice that after a certain point, it wasn’t staying awake and functioning that was the problem, but actually knocking off and sleeping when it was time? (Dean might think the weapons and quirks were the things that made him a freak, that ensured he’d never quite fit in, but it was the sleep thing that made everyone wonder about him.) Jess had made it better, he slept when she slept, warm body breathing smoothly next to him, but he still had plenty of trouble.

Without her, even with Dean in the next bed, it’s all nightmares and staring at the ceiling, early morning jogs and coffee runs so Dean doesn’t realize how bad he’s gotten.

God, please, just let him sleep. Just one night without the nightmares. That’s all. One night of not watching his girlfriend burn above him.


	9. Home

Saying Dean has less than zero interest in going back to Lawrence is possibly understating it. Sam’s nightmare visions or not, the last time he was in that town, he’d sworn he would never go back. 

It might be home, somehow, to Sam, but all Lawrence means to Dean is death and destruction. Home is a black V8. Lawrence is Dad leaving him behind, saddled with a toddler when he was kid himself. Lawrence just turned Dad mean when he argued with his friends and drank after.

Not like Mom is buried there anyway. If their grandparents were still alive… well, if their grandparents had still been alive, their lives probably would have been very different. No point in wishful thinking anyhow. Sam is insistent. And if he wants to do a specific hunt over another, so be it.

Pulling up in front of the house, his behemoth of a car sticking out from all the small sensible student and professor cars, it’s obvious that Sam doesn’t remember Mom or the night she died. He’s vibrating next to Dean, seeing his bedtime stories in front of him. Dean quiet beside him, remembering a baby thrust into too small arms, nearly tripping on the porch stairs, trying to get to safety, “Take your brother, Dean. Run, Dean, now.”

Of course, Dean also remembers the next day too, the part Sam never hears, begging Dad to get his doll when he went back for what he could salvage. Staying with the neighbors all day, already going silent, seal pressed into place when Dad returned with nothing but a change of clothes for himself and an old journal. Not even any photos of Mom.

Dean has no interest in going back to that town, that house, those memories. But, as always, the prime directive of ‘Protect Sammy’ holds true. Can’t let him go in there by himself after all.


	10. Asylum

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is where that language tag starts being there for a reason. Just as a heads up.

The deeper into the South wing Sam gets, the angrier he is. The normal irritations of day to day life: his razor was dull this morning and he’d cut himself; he’d spilled coffee on his last clean pair of jeans yesterday, leaving him the option of either smelling like coffee or wearing his Fed suit all day. He hates this job, how it forces him to be much colder than he wanted. And those idiot kids, whose fucking suburban lives would never be touched by anything more dangerous than a fucking feral dog, think Dean is his boss because why?

 

Dean is the one with the inferiority complex, who constantly lords  _ everything  _ over Sam, and carries too many weapons. Perfect Dean, beloved of an absentee father, getting bullshit coded messages to take them further on a wild goose chase when they aren’t even sure the goose is a goose and not some fox pretending to be a goose. 

 

Fucking goose. Actually, as good descriptor of Dad as any: angry, bite your face off mean, territorial over the weirdest shit. And his sons have never been regarded as territory. Fuck, Sam still hasn’t been forgiven for shit that happened nearly 10 years ago, like it’s his fault that Dean couldn’t hack high school and decided to drop out. Like it’s his fault Dean told Dad to fuck off, he wasn’t moving again this year. Most parents would have been ecstatic that the only kid to graduate high school also got into fucking Stanford on a fucking full ride. But not his family. Oh, fuck no. Dad was so fucking butthurt that he stopped speaking to him and Dean.

 

Pathetic Dean. Always chasing after Dad like a fucking dog. Can’t entertain a single original thought that someone else didn’t put there. So desperate for someone else’s approval.

  
Pathetic.


	11. Scarecrow

It’s not that Dean isn’t capable of doing hunts on his own, he just hates doing it. It makes more tactical sense to have someone watching your back; someone who will notice if you don’t check-in. He knows not every hunter has a regular partner- Dad hadn’t for a long time, just Dean, and Sam when the situation called for it. But just because his dad was comfortable with going solo doesn’t mean Dean is. 

Not that it matters too much- Dad pretty much torched every connection to other hunters he had over the years. And hunters trust the known, their jobs revolving around taking gossip at face value. Dean may be as good of a hunter as John, but everyone knows that Winchester is loose canon, too obsessed with the job. Dad may have meant to burn only his bridges, but he’d burned Dean’s too.

But Dean had dealt. It’s what he does. He’d allowed himself to get used to hunting with a partner again, because where else was Sam going to be? That had lasted about 6 months. And here Dean is, hunting solo again. Because Sam has gone and Dad is always gone and no other hunter will work with him after Bobby ran Dad off. He can’t blame Sam, not really, the kid feels Dad’s absence like a canker. It’s probably better for Sam to be searching for Dad instead of being distracted on a hunt.

But fuck, Dean could use a second pair of eyes on this. He’s missing something, something obvious, and he can’t get far enough back to see it. He can feel the shape of the missing piece, but not enough to be able to tell what is missing. Just that something is. Maybe the local community college will have more sources, someone to bounce ideas back at him.


	12. Faith

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> With apologies, and thanks, to the Dresden Files and Jim Butcher

Sam hadn’t even wanted to take this damn hunt. Rawheads are the supernatural equivalent of cockroaches- everywhere, next to impossible to kill, and seeing one generally meant there were even worse things around. Last time they’d seen one, it was scavenging after a rougarou; before that, a pack of shifters. And the damn things grew with every kill, so if one was big enough to be hunting on it’s own… this thing was ancient, and crafty, and going to suck a lot.

Traditional lore said they needed 3 or 4 hunters, a convenient lightning strike, and a whole lot of luck to take one down once it got as big as this. Dean’s logic was sound at least: if lightning could take one down, no reason why a taser wouldn’t also do it, with the added benefit of also sticking the damn thing with iron. But even a superpowered taser still left an awful lot to chance (really, Sam thought Dean just wanted to fuck around with the tasers he’d picked up a few years back), particularly once you factored in the preferred environment for rawheads: dark and damp, the exact sort of place where fucking with electricity was the worst idea.

Sam was tired though, good sleep becoming rarer and rarer, and Dean was so excited. So he gave in. 

And now look at them: 3 days in the hospital, Dean dying, because he was too tired to say no. Never again. He is going to get Dean healed up, regardless of what it takes, and then they are going to find Dad, find Jess’s killer, and then STOP. Stop traveling, stop hunting, stop risking their lives for people who call the cops on them. Just. Stop.

Go back to school, both of them. Get Dean his auto mechanics certifications, find nice girls, kids. If Dad wants to keep going, fine. But Sam is putting his foot down. This was one close call too many, he and Dean are out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everything I know about rawheads comes from Dresden Files and even then, there's not a whole lot to go off of. There's just not a whole lot around that is easily found in a google search. So I made it up, except for the cockroach thing. That is pulled directly from Dresden Files.


	13. Route 666

“You told her. You told her, the secret! Our big family rule number one. We do what we do and we shut up about it. For a year and a half I do nothing but lie to Jessica, and you go out with this chick in Ohio a coupla times and you tell her everything?”

Oh, there was the judgement that Dean has been expecting from Sam. Because Dean doesn’t date, of course. Nevermind that even if he had wanted to date before Sam left, he’d been busy- busy keeping a roof over their heads with less and less support from Dad every month; busy fighting with Dad to stay in one place so Sam could graduate; busy handling local huts by himself on the weekends. Not enough time to date, or admittedly, the desire. But Sam could be pissed if he wanted. Dating blew up in his face anyway, both times he tried it. So, no, he doesn’t date. That implies a future where he isn’t crossing the country every other month. He thought he’d be in Athens for a while, that’s why he had tried. But he wasn’t. A month, and he was gone.

And here is Sam passing judgment.

Dean presses a little harder on the gas. If he pushes it, they can be in Cape Girardeau by early evening and he really wants to get this over with. Even if without the poorly resolved Cassie situation, he really doesn’t want to be so close to St. Louis after being pronounced dead there. 

Fuck dating anyway. Cheaper, easier to find someone in the same situation at a truck stop or bar and work out a deal. Same routine he’s been working since he’d worked out how to pick someone up. Even if it occasionally feels empty, it is, more or less, unlikely to backfire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quotation is pulled directly from the show.


	14. Nightmare

15 years since Dean first took a beating for his brother. 15 years of running the extra mile, covering for the research not being done because Sam wanted to go to the park. 

Sam didn’t know about the wrestling championship. About Home Ec instead of shop. About the nights his homework got skipped with a quick ‘I’ll do it later,’ as he helped Sam with his. Dropping out rather than continuing to waste time that could be better spent finding a job, keeping a roof over their heads. Dean tries not to dwell on it, because what does that accomplish, but it kills him sometimes, when Sam complains about their childhood. He’d done the best he could. It just… wasn’t enough.

How many times did they move on not because there was a new hunt but because there was no more money to stay put? A little more Jose, little less demon hunting, sure. That was surely why there was always a hunt away from them in late January, in early May, the entire month of November, nearly every Christmas. Demon hunting, not Jose, Jack and Jim taking the places of Sam and Dean in Dad’s mind. 

Sam didn’t see, and he never would. The story became the story. A convenient fiction to be told to himself and his friends at school.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to SubjectToChange8 for providing the genesis of this one, nearly 3 years after she wrote the thing.  
> http://subjecttochange8.tumblr.com/post/40653213071/a-little-more-tequila-and-a-little-less-demon


	15. The Benders

After a lifetime of roadside dives and truck stops, Sam knew that when Dean said “gotta take a piss” after a night of playing darts actually meant he was hooking up with someone out back. Since it almost always happened when the crowd wasn’t right for hustling pool, he suspected it was hustling of a different sort, but… if it made Dean feel better to lie to Sam about it, he wouldn’t say anything. Although this was one of the reasons Sam was so eager to get out (He’d done his share of hustling too, during the summers when scholarships expired and shifts at the campus bookstore dried to nothing. He hated it, had never been able to convince his brain to separate sex as a transaction from sex as love/desire, but he’d done it anyway.). Either way, Sam really hoped this wasn’t going to take very long. 

Sam leaned against the Impala. Nice night to wait outside, even if he was just twiddling his thumbs for a bit. Maybe he should pick back up that five minute meditation thing that Jess always pushed. He missed the clarity of mind that it brought. Maybe it would help with his stupid visions, or at least knock the headaches down a peg. 

Fuck. Someone needed to tune that car up, a belt maybe? He should have paid more attention to Dean and Bobby fixing up cars over the years.


	16. Shadow

Sam still isn’t convinced it wasn’t a dream. To have Dad so close, to have a lead on the fucker that killed Jess, that killed Mom, yet walk away. He just wants this to be over, but every step they take towards that just makes things more complicated.

He glances over at Dean, hunched behind the wheel on their way to another bullshit hunt. It’s not that he doesn’t care about Dean, he just thinks they’d be happier not living on the road. Sam hates this, constantly broke, never able to trust anyone except each other. He’s hated this since the time he spent the night at Scott’s house in second grade, saw folks who weren’t afraid of the things in the closet, people who thought church and prayers were a promise for the future, not tools for the present.

Maybe he just hasn’t made it clear enough that, yeah, he wants to quit hunting, but he wants Dean with him. How has he not noticed how little hope Dean has for the future? Does he really just envision hunting until he dies? God, how did he missed that the only thing Dean wasn’t willing to give up was his family and Sam had torn it away four years ago. And did it again two years later when Dean showed up wanting to see him, just to make sure he was doing ok…

He thinks about apologizing, acknowledging how royally he’d screwed Dean over when he left the way he did. Dad had never been the best at blaming the right folks.

They lapse into silence as soon as they’re on the highway, the Impala eating up the miles.


	17. Hell House

Dean doesn’t mean to start a prank war. Sam is dozing next to him, finally getting some sleep, but he’s been dozing for hours. And the spoon from his milkshake earlier is right there… tempting him. So he does what any self-respecting big brother would do- sticks the spoon in his brother’s slack mouth and prepares blackmail photos that should be good to at least get him out of one trip to the laundromat. 

Honestly, it feels good, letting some steam off. Even in the middle of some whacked out bizarro haunting, they’re on good enough terms to jack around. Of course, if he is being honest with himself, he’ll admit that he’s missed Sam’s presence by his side more than he’s missed Dad. Dad is… mercurial. Around for weeks at a time, suddenly gone, not seen for months, and back again, pissed that the Impala isn’t in mint condition. Sam… Sam is always there, except when he isn’t.

But then, standing next to Sam as they watch two jackholes drive off with their ridiculous RV… he and Sam always have worked better as a team.


	18. Something Wicked

Sam watched as Dean settled Michael back into bed, tucking him in a bit more securely than Michael probably would have tolerated from his mom. But the kid looked pretty shell shocked still, so it was just as well. This was the Dean of Sam’s childhood: feeding him dinner, helping him with homework, tucking him into bed.

Dean was good with kids. Always had been. A stray thought from nine months ago floated across his brain, “I love kids.” He’d treated it like a joke at the time, assuming it was some line to pick up Andrea. But this, and really his whole childhood, were proof it wasn’t a line. Dean didn’t spend a whole lot of time with his emotions, but given half a chance, he sure stepped right back into the caregiver role.

As much as he loved his brother, Sam didn’t think Dean knew how much he gave away every time he refused to talk about something. Particularly when Dad was involved.

Sam didn’t understand why some hunt over fifteen years ago would get blocked and shut down. Most of their childhood had been like that: Dad off to hunt some monster instead of raising his kids, leaving Dean in charge. Some shitty motel and questionable parenting as always. There was nothing to differentiate this one from any of the hundreds of others. But something had Dean running scared, even years later.

Dad never left hunts unfinished. 

Sam searched his memory. Seventeen years ago was the the winter they’d spent with Pastor Jim, the winter Sam watched his big brother go from being a kid to being a soldier in Dad’s endless war. He’d always chalked it up to just an awkward age divide between the two of them, but if Dad had laid into Dean… Not so much a brainless drone then as much as a kid desperately trying to regain his father’s approval.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have OPINIONS about John's treatment of his kids, all three of them, and suspicions about what he was doing when Sam and Dean were facing the striga as kids


	19. Provenance

Dean glanced over at Sam as he pulled into the exit lane. “Okay, dude, we’ve been on the road for like 15 hours. Tell me you’ve found us something to hunt. We’re coming up on Athens.”

 

Sam looked up from Dad’s journal, “Well, I might have something in upstate New York or something in the swamps of Louisiana. I’ll need to check the newspapers first for confirmation.”

 

Dean nodded and started watching exit signs for  a place to crash and food. “Looks like our options for dinner are a bar or pizza. Or hot dogs.” Sam looked pained at all three options. “Ok, a bar it is then.”

* * *

 

Sam takes a sip of his (warm) beer. A college bar isn’t really his idea of a good dinner. But the beer is cheap, frat boys are almost universally shit at both pool and figuring out when they’re being hustled, and, a rarity, free wi-fi to keep him occupied until Dean cleaned out the frat boys. Eventually, Sam’ll find someone to buy a dime bag from and maybe he’ll even be able to get some sleep tonight. 

 

The Louisiana thing isn’t going anywhere. Dad’s last note is dated in 2001 and there haven’t been any more sightings of the ‘sentient swamp moss’ or whatever since. Probably a prank by some stupid high schoolers or, looking at the report dates, generations of stupid high schoolers.

  
The gruesome murders in New York look to be much more up their alley. Blood, guts, setting shit on fire, even a history of the same over the past century. Yeah. Now he just needs to find some sleep aid, reclaim his brother (currently pretending that he isn’t flirting with the bartender as the man hands back his change), and they can be back on the road in the morning.g.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spot the reference!


	20. Dead Man's Blood

Dean keeps silent mostly until they’re hitting Denver’s suburbs. Nothing beyond the most necessary information. The things that would normally result in irritated rants: shitty radio stations; ruts in the county roads they take to avoid the interstate; even those earn maybe a grunt or a huffed sigh. 

It’s only partially because of a hunt gone bad. But silence encourages sleep, and Dean knows full well the only time that Sam is sleeping right now is in the car.

Sam clearly thinks he’s hiding it, that Dean is oblivious to the habits of a lifetime. But it’s pretty obvious he’s watching shit television as Dean is passing out, and he’s gone for a jog when Dean wakes up. Dean gets maybe four hours a night, and he doesn’t think Sam is getting even that. They’re going to need to talk about the vital importance of sleep at some point. But not right now, regardless of how ridiculous it’s getting.

Dean’s entire life is getting ridiculous. Sammy’s not sleeping because of nightmare visions, they’re taking random hunts in Colorado in hope of finding one of Dad’s friends, or a clue about Dad’s whereabouts. With the exception of a ten minute conversation in May, Dad’s been in the wind for nearly a year and Dean’s not long sure why he’s bothering to look anymore. Dad clearly doesn’t want to be found, would rather leave his sons to their own devices.

Increasingly, it feels like they should give up the search for Dad, get Sam back to Stanford, let him get on with his life while Dean hunts and searches. He would never deny Sam a chance to take down the Demon, but it’s a waste to have Sam’s brain out here in the trenches. Surely being stable, having his friends would be better than the constant movement and a meat-head brother. Would help with the sleep problems, let him grieve Jess properly. Maybe they should just head further west, hunting as they go, drop Sam off in time to start the new semester.

Dean doesn’t _think_ Sam will cut off all contact this time.

Because as much as he wants his family back around him, Dean knows this is temporary. Sam will leave again, Dad has never stuck around, not even when Mom was alive. Better to end this now, while he can control the fallout. Before he starts making plans for a future he’ll never get.


	21. Salvation

They’ve been in Dad’s motel room for less than five minutes and Sam is already done with this bullshit. Really, he was done with John’s shit twelve hours ago, when he made that dig at Dean keeping the Impala clean. As if Dean doesn’t spend ninety percent of his already limited free time trying to keep her in perfect condition.

Of course, it spirals from the car into more personal affronts. Sam had noticed how often Dean called Caleb and Pastor Jim, even Bobby. But he thought it was Dean checking in to make sure someone knew he was still alive. He hadn’t realized they were watching morgues as well in hopes that John would appear fucking somewhere, anywhere. So they, not some random cop, would be telling Dean that a John Doe matching John’s description had turned up in a pond or whatever.

Once more, Sam blesses Jess for dragging his ass to therapy as soon as they started dating. He’s dealt with most of his anger from their childhood, even if it still catches him off guard sometimes. But, watching Dean adopt a military posture, start adding ‘sir,’ reverting to the automaton that Dean is only when John’s around, it occurs to Sam that he’d never dealt with that.

Fucking hell. He should have taken Dean with him when he left. Or at least asked. Because this, this is how it always has been when confronting John. Sam angry, Dean retreating into a strange mix of machismo and avoidance. Fuck this. Sam’s done. Finish this, kill the demon, and he’s out. And he’s taking Dean with him. They’ll be alone again, just like those years they’d spent in New Mexico.

Seriously, fuck John Winchester.


	22. Devil's Trap

It is the sirens that wake him, blearily dragging him back to consciousness as the world filled with flashing lights and the distinct not-panic of trained professionals certain of at least one fatality. He’s seen it before, will undoubtedly see it again.

“Sir, Sir? Can you hear me?” 

A flashlight blinds him as Sam groans. “I’m fine, just hit my head. Dean… my brother, backseat. He was already hurt bad…”

The voices around him take on a more urgent tone, even as hands start pulling him out of the front seat, “C’mon kid. Gotta get you and the other guy out so we have enough room in the back seat.”

It takes far longer than it should for his brain to put thought into action, but the hands are there, guiding him into a waiting ambulance. The hands push him to sit down. The light is back in his eyes, moving this time, and words are happening around him… but he has no idea what they’re saying. A distant part of his mind starts diagnosing himself: shock almost certainly, probably a concussion.

There’s a noise next to him as another person is deposited. Dad’s arm is hanging funny and he has a cut on his forehead, but he looks like he’ll be ruining their lives again in no time.

Sam blinks and there’s a sudden rush of movement by the Impala, the door coming off and folks swarm the car, carefully extracting Dean. The crowd starts chattering, yelling numbers at each other. It takes a moment for the importance of that chatter to soak through Sam’s addled brain.

Dean. Dean is alive still. The demon hasn’t killed him, or Dad. Maybe they could still beat this.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find my tumblr at treefrogie84.tumblr.com


End file.
